by Bernard Barani

As part of the Digital Single Market (DSM) initiative launched by the Juncker Commission, 5G has been recognised as a key technology for Europe. 5G has indeed been identified as the connectivity platform to support the wider DSM policy objectives of large scale digitisation of the industry, thanks to the native 5G capability to support agile and intelligent connectivity for very diverse use case requirements originating from automotive, healthcare, factories, energy or media sectors. The more systematic adoption of technologies derived from the cloud computing environments such as Virtual Network Functions, micro-service and containers have enabled the design of networks with cloud native architectures supporting a very high flexibility and versatility of connectivity platforms. Beyond the introduction of new radio waveforms, access networks and spectrum uses, “virtualisation and cloudification” is a key innovation of 5G, enabling communication to be flexibly integrated into a complete digital business value chain.